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Saturday, 27 December 2014

Week 21 - New year explained by The Grambler

Stewart was an amazing
person - A wonderful husband, a fantastic brother, a loving son and an
adored uncle. He was also a brilliant friend and colleague and will be
missed by so many people. His family are determined that his death will never
be in vain and are doing their part to beat bowel cancer for good.We are fundraising for the Bobby Moore Fund
which is part of Cancer Research UK and specialises in research into bowel
cancer.If you wish to donate to the
fund, you can viahttps://www.justgiving.com/Geraldine-Smith3
.

His wish was that The Grambler
should continue after his death and I have been happy to oblige.Welcome to The Grambler, the most
ill-informed blog you are ever likely to see. Read on and enjoy…

Dear Mr Grimbling,

Here’s a teaser for you Mr Grimbling.Which football club is known as the Vikings?I bet you don’t know.

Yours lovingly,

Dawn Castor.

Did you have a nice Gramblemas?Good?Me?Not bad at all; thanks for asking. Well, it
is now time to wish happy random date as determined by Pope Gregory XIII to all
my grambling chums out there in Grambleland.This week’s topic for your edification is not a rant or a grumble, but a
why?Why was January 1st
chosen as the date when a new yearly cycle should begin?[Yearly cycle?Bikes? – Ed.]

For millennia it has been recognised that one year represents a
complete rotation of the Earth’s seasons.It was apparently worked out from animal mating times and yearly events
such as solstices and equinoxes.It gave
us clever humans some guidelines about when to plant seeds and when to harvest
crops.All very sensible and all damned
clever considering reading and writing were not something our early ancestors
had yet come up with.One thing they
certainly hadn’t come up with was a clock and calendar system and yet these
early humans could pinpoint with amazing accuracy the spring and autumn
equinoxes when the daylight and darkness hours are exactly the same.They could also work out the times that summer
and winter solstices gave the longest daylight hours and hours of darkness
respectively.All very clever, but it
still doesn’t answer my question of why January 1st should be the
day in the yearly cycle chosen as the start of a new year.Surely, it would make more sense to have one
of the equinoxes or solstices as the date of a new year.

My own view is this… I reckon that before Christianity came along with
it’s ‘I’m right, everyone else is wrong’ philosophy, winter solstice was the
time chosen by most societies as being the changeover point between one year
and the next.With me so far?Why did the Christians change it to a week or
two later?Well, the bloke that began
the whole thing, that Jesus from off of the Bible, was born at just about
winter solstice time.He probably
thought, blow this for a game of soldiers, it’s my birthday and everyone’s off
singing Auld Lang Syne and eating steak pie and shortbread and not even getting
me a present.Well, I reckon the leader
of a religion deserves a bit more recognition, so here’s the plan… move new
year forward a week and then, Hey Prescott, you all notice me and give me some
presents.All his followers thought –
Hey Jesus, not a bad idea, let’s do it.So there you have it.The real
reason new year is a week after Christmas.Oh, and Jesus finally got that new bike he’d always wanted. [Ha! Bikes!
Told you. – Ed.]

Hmm, nothing worth gramblerising was ever produced by that lot… or was
there?Marlene Deitrich?Mike Pinder?Mick Jones?Surely one of them
could provide us with a toon.Aha…
Scotty Moore, geetarist on all of Elvis Presley’s early hits.He’s our man.Now, what toon should we have?

You ain't nothin but a Grambler
Gramblin all the time.
You ain't nothin but a Grambler
Gramblin all the time.
Well, you aint never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine.

I was looking at
other Elvis toons to do and thought of Jailhouse Rock.Do you know, I don’t think I have ever
noticed the lyrics before…

Number forty-seven said to number three:
You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.

Now, I am assuming
that the jailhouse being discussed here was an all-male establishment, which
means that number 47 was attracted to number 3 in a way which would suggest
that he had plans for him other than dancing to the jailhouse rock.Who’d have thought Elvis would have promoted
such behaviour back in 1957?

Let’s move on to more
wholesome activities, shall we?Yes, how
to lose money in one easy lesson – follow The Grambler.How did his/her/its predictions fare last
week?Do you really want to know?It failed miserably.Read on.

Aston Villa
vs Man Utd – Prediction Away win

Result –
Aston Villa 1 Manchester United 1

Ooh!
‘It the bar!

Christian
Benteke gave Aston Villa the lead on 18 minutes with a left-footed shot.Radamel Falcao headed home Manchester
United's equaliser shortly after half-time from an Ashley Young cross.Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor was shown a
straight red card midway through the second half after fouling Young, his
first sending off in a 289 game Premiershit career.

Liam Fontaine headed in Scott Allan's corner to give
the visitors the lead for the first time.

And Dominique Malonga made sure of the points for Alan
Stubbs' side when he converted from close range in the final 10 minutes.

Ah well.Ne’er
mind, eh.

What about some predictions for this week?Well, because it is Gramblemas, the fixtures
are in a right old pickle.All the
English games take place on boxing day whereas only the Scottish games take
place at the rightful place of Saturday at 3pm.It’s made a right mess of The Grambler’s selection process and no
mistake (Beg pardon; coming over all Cockney there, guvnor.).Thus The Grambler has only the 18 games
taking place this Saturday the 27th of December at 3pm to choose from.So what five has The Grambler randomly selected?

Game – Result – Odds

Livingston
vs Hearts – Prediction Away win – 4/9

Falkirk
vs Raith – Prediction Home win – 4/6

Airdrie vs Ayr
– Prediction Home win – 10/11

Stirling
vs Morton – Prediction Away win – 8/11

Stranraer vs
Stenhousemuir – Prediction Home win – 4/9

That’s it for this week my little grambling
chums.The bets are placed (10 x 20 pee
doubles and 1 x 20 pee accumulator) and if they all go as predicted by The
Grambler, the Bobby Moore Fund will benefit to the tune of…fanfare please…

£7.64

…What a crap tune.Seven quids and 64 pees!Is that
all?Still, if it wins, it’ll be a lot
more than we have won in the past few weeks.Will it win?Doubt it.

And now… its teaser time.Last week I asked you who was the first
non-British manager to win a major trophy in English football.The answer was none other than…

…Ruud Gullit.

What about a teaser for this week?Who is the only goalkeeper to have won every
major domestic and world title there is to claim?Easy peasy, lemon squeazy.

And finally, Cyril?And finally Esther a new year quote from comedian Joey Adams…

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